Frank Mir already ahead of the game in prep for UFC 146

Frank Mir will still have to duck Junior Dos Santos’ punches, but his gas thank shouldn’t be an issue.

Mir’s short-notice title shot against the current champ at Saturday’s UFC 146 presents a 10-minute bump in the amount of potential time he could be fighting.

But the former champ said that’s no problem – he’d already been training for 25 minutes in the cage.

“The reason why this wasn’t as hard on me as some people might have thought is because leading up to the fight I was already training for a five-round fight,” Mir told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio).

It’s not uncommon for a fighter to train for more rounds than needed, but in Mir’s case, the choice was made for a very specific reason: Cain Velasquez.

“You want to talk about a stress, he’s got hands, kicks – the thing I think would make anyone nervous (when) you know you have to fight Cain is that, well, you know he never gets tired, right? You can hit him, throw him, do whatever you want to him, and the guy’s still motoring forward,” Mir said.

“You’re never going to be able to beat Velasquez with cardio, but at least you can cut that gap to where it’s head and shoulders above you.”

Velasquez, who held the belt before Dos Santos ripped it away at UFC on FOX 1, was Mir’s original opponent before Alistair Overeem lost the title shot following a failed pre-fight drug test for Saturday’s event. Velasquez now meets Antonio Silva.

UFC 146 takes place at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Main-card fights air live on pay-per-view while preliminary-card fights go to FX and Facebook.

Mir said a possible shakeup was already in the back of his mind when he began training for the former champ. With injuries common in fight camps, he had entertained the possibility of serving as a replacement.

“I would hate for it to be a week or two before the fight and someone breaks a hand or twists an ankle, and now it’s like, ‘Who’s going to replace the title fight and step up,’ and being a situation where I felt like … I’m not prepared enough to add those extra rounds.”

While it’s hard to imagine Mir would have passed on the title shot for such a reason, his hunch paid off.

One of the only UFC heavyweights currently on a significant hot streak, Mir (16-5 MMA, 14-5 UFC) comes into the fight with wins over Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic, Roy Nelson and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

Mir immediately noted that Dos Santos had been training for an orthodox fighter and was now forced to fight a southpaw, which served as an advantage.

Oddsmakers aren’t so convinced. Mir is a sizable underdog in Saturday’s fight; he has about a 20 percent chance of winning. Dos Santos’ one-punch knockout power likely weighs heavily in that number, especially when combined with Mir’s knockout losses and tendency to take damage early in a fight.

Still, such odds could irk a fighter that’s been around as long as Mir. But the cerebral fighter said that’s not the case this time around.

“To be honest with you, I kind of enjoy it,” he said. “A lot of my friends, they put money on the fight. So they’ve been very ecstatic about this. Hopefully, if they do well, they could take me out for sushi.”

MMAjunkie.com Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia, MMAjunkie.com lead staff reporter John Morgan and producer Brian “Goze” Garcia. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.